No Need to Say Goodbye
by Prosper-the-XVIII
Summary: Inspired by The Call by Regina Spektor. Effie and Caesar are in District 13. It's not exactly the Capitol, and after Effie's torture, all they can really do it tyr and get their lives back together. CaeFie and hayFfie freindship


For an entire week, he barely left her side.

In fact, if it hadn't been for basic human necessities such as having to go to the bathroom, eat and wash, he wouldn't have moved at all.

District 13 had fought the Capitol to keep her alive. However, they didn't specify exactly how 'alive' they wanted her. They had broken her in the time she had been under their arrest; she had arrived smashed into a thousand pieces, and he had sworn to himself that he would help her pick them up again and make some sort of sense out of the chaos that was now both of their lives.

Now, on day eight, Caesar Flickerman sat at Effie's bedside; her cold, limp hand in the tight grasp of his own - rather sweaty - one. Every day he had sat, motionless; her hand in his as she lay with her eyes closed, unable to move. Every so often, a nurse and, more often than not, Primrose Everdeen would come by; the nurse to find out if Effie was doing any better or any worse, check her stitches, change bandages et cetera, while Prim demurely chatted to him, half out of genuine interest in what he had to say - somehow, he managed to make it seem to her that he wasn't lacking much of his usual charisma, though that couldn't be less true - and half to distract him for a minute or two from Effie's somewhat sorry state and the unfortunate circumstances in which they'd ended up where they were.

Caesar picked lethargically at a gluey eye. He hadn't slept in a bed of any sort, let alone his own, in more than a fortnight; in the week he'd been chained to a wall in some underground dungeon in the Capitol, he hadn't slept for much longer than five consecutive minutes, and now he had taken to falling asleep in the hard plastic chair he had been occupying for the past seven days, his head against either the wall or Effie's chest.

When 13 had come for them, Effie had been in a right mess - Caesar himself probably hadn't looked to pretty either, but with just a broken nose, fractured radius and superficial cuts to his face and torso, he had gotten off lightly. Effie's face had been streaked with tear-run makeup and blood from the large graze to her temple; her back had been a sticky, infected mess of congealed blood from the lashes of a whip and multiple fractures to her right leg, ribs, jaw and shoulders had later come up on x-rays; no doubt the result of merciless beatings. She had been put into a coma within hours of their arrival, and he had been told that there was a 50/50 chance that she wouldn't wake up again. And he had sworn to himself that whatever happened - whether she passed away or opened her eyes - he would be there with her for that happening.

Caesar looked at himself in the mirror by Effie's bed; his lilac hair was hanging limp, greasy and tangled to his shoulders. Just to add to the state of it, his roots were beginning to grow in in his natural dark brown, which thanks to his age was now threaded with strands of grey. The cut down his cheek was healing, thankfully, but the bruising around his eyes and across the bridge of his nose looked worse than ever. Dressed in the plain white and grey attire of District 13, his coloured hair and face much younger than his 52 years looked out of place, as much so as he would have looked if he had gone out in the Capitol dressed like someone from District 12. Experimentally, he curled the fingers of his plastered hand. The alien lack of wrist movement felt a bit weird, but he could just ignore this. Squeezing her hand a little tighter, Caesar brought his face close to hers, planting a soft kiss on her cheek. He smiled, muttering into her hair, which for once was actually hers. "Come on, sweetheart...I love you..."

He felt her shudder, noticeably. Her eyelids flickered. By now, Caesar had near-silent tears rolling down his cheeks and a broad smile on his face. Then, a slow, gravelly voice left Effie's lips as she took a breath.

"I love you too..."


End file.
